MANY YEARS
ago Humboldt observed that if there was a transition from animal
to man, that transition took place with the acquisition of speech.
(1) But he added
with rare insight, that in order to speak, man must already have
been human. The problem of accounting for the origin of speech
appeared to him therefore to be insoluble. Apart from revelation,
it still is.
Because of the influence of Darwin's
theories, it seemed at one time unnecessary to question the derivation
of human speech from animal cries. Essentially the two were the
same; it was merely a question of the degree of complexity. Following
in the steps of earlier social anthropologists, who were arranging
the various primitive cultures in a sequence from the simple
to more complex, thereby illustrating man's supposed climb to
Parnassus, those who philosophized about language assumed that
the strange grunts, clicks, and grimaces of the lowliest "savages"
were evidence that speech, like all else, had evolved by barely
perceptible steps from simple to complex.(2)

1 This observation is referred to by Lyell,
in his Antiquity of Man, 4th edition, 1873, p.518. A very
useful passage from Buffon on the same basic point is quoted
by J. C. Greene, The Death of Adam, Iowa State University
Press, 1959, pp.202, 203.
2. A. Goldenweiser has a beautiful illustration of this principle:
"What is the theoretical justification for designating as
historical, i.e., actual, a series of instances never observed
in this successive form in history? The only answer the evolutionist
could give here would be that according to the general principles
of evolution such were the stages, and that now they were concretely
illustrated; therefore the evolutionary hypothesis is correct.
. . . The argument is therefore circular; something that
is to be proved, or an inherent part of that something, is assumed
in order to make the proof valid. The evolutionist, unable to
discover his stages in the historical perspective of one tribal
culture, for the simple reason that such a perspective is never
available except fragmentarily, proceeds to substitute an instance
found in one tribe as a stage succeeding upon an instance drawn
from another, and so on until the entire series is completed.
The resulting collection of instances is therefore historically
a hodgepodge. What makes the collection an historical or a presumed
historical series is once more the assumption of uniformity of
development which makes the evolutionist feel at liberty to fill
in the gaps in the series of instances wherever found. . . .
Throughout then we find that what is to be demonstrated,
is already assumed to validate the demonstration" [my
emphasis]. Anthropology, Crofts, New York, 1945, p.508.

pg.2
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Two Accounts

1. The Evolutionary Account

But little
by little it appeared that the problem was more difficult. To
begin with, more careful studies of the most primitive societies
made by men in the field who spent enough time to learn to use
the native languages they were studying, began to reveal that
far from being simple, they were often exceedingly complex. (3) Indeed so rich in terms
did they eventually prove to be in many cases, that such an authority
as Levy-Bruhl came to doubt (perhaps unjustifiably) whether they
even thought as we do. The difference could no longer be measured
in terms of "higher" and "lower" but as a
different way of conceiving reality, indeed from one point of
view, a more complex way of viewing it. (4) G. G. Simpson rightly remarked: (5)

At the present time no languages
are primitive in the sense of being significantly close to the
origins of language. Even the people with least complex culture
have highly sophisticated languages, with complex grammar, and
large vocabularies capable of naming and discussing anything
that occurs in the sphere occupied by their speakers.

Eric Lenneberg
has said that primitive languages actually require more intelligence
to learn than our so-called sophisticated languages do. (6) That language of a highly
abstract nature must have been with man in very, very early times
seems to have been recently confirmed by the finding, reported
by Alexander Marshack, (7) of what appear to be clearly mathematical notations
on a number of bone fragments dated (expansively) at 15,000 to
13,000 B.C.
In fact, the simpler the culture,
the more complex in this sense

3. A. L. Kroeber remarks in this connection,
"Dictionaries compiled by missionaries or philologists of
languages previously unwritten, run to surprising figures. Thus
the number of words recorded in Klamath, the speech of a culturally
rude American Indian Tribe, is 7,000; in Navaho, 11,000; in Zulu,
17,000; in Dakota, 19,000; in Maya 20,000, in Nahuatl, 27,000.
It may safely be estimated that every existing language, no matter
how backward its speakers are in their general civilization,
possesses a vocabulary of at least 5,000 to 10,000 words."
Kroeber then adds this note: "Jesperson, who allows 20,000
words to Shakespeare, and 8,000 to Milton, cites 26,000 as the
vocabulary of Swedish peasants." Anthropology, Harcourt,
Brace, New York, 1948, p.231
4. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, How Natives Think, translated by
Lilian A. Clare, Allen and Unwin, London, 1926, is full of fascinating
material illustrating this point.
5. Simpson, G. G., "The Biology of Natural Man," Science,
vol.152, 1966, p.477.
6. Lenneberg, Eric, The Biological Foundations of Language,
Wiley, New York,1967, p.264.
7. Marshack, Alexander, "Upper Paleolithic Notation and
Symbol," Science, vol.178,1972, p.817ff.

pg.3
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was its language likely
to prove. Evidently therefore, the whole concept of arranging
these cultures in an evolutionary scale was quite wrong. (8) Abandoning this principle
cleared the way for a more careful investigation of the origin
of human speech, and attention was turned to the problem from
several different directions. To begin with, an answer was sought
to the questions, What is the nature of human speech, and Do
animals "speak" to one another at all? If so, are the
two forms of communication related or comparable? If they are
not, we cannot easily derive the one from the other. Since, as
we shall see, a negative conclusion was reached by a number of
investigators, the origin of human speech remained a profound
mystery.
Further investigation soon revealed
other complications. Speech was always assumed to be instinctive.
But the discovery from time to time of "wild" or feral
children without speech, showed clearly that it results only
where there has been social contact. Moreover such contact must
be with speaking individuals, for it was further discovered that
someone else has to start the process off for each one of us.
Company alone does not create communication by speech. Without
the spark from one party already the possessor of the faculty,
there is no conversation.
Having arrived at this point, it
was felt that human beings should be able to encourage animals
to speak, unless the organs of speech were different in the latter.
In the course of time it was concluded from investigation of
the anatomy of the higher apes that the organs of certain animals
are not basically different, and that they therefore ought to
be able to speak as we do. (9) And indeed, there are some creatures such as parrots,
which, though not in the supposed evolutionary base line from
amoeba to man, can be taught to

8. Clyde Kluckhohn in his prize-winning book,
Mirror for Man, McGraw Hill, New York, 1969, p.148, remarks:
"In contrast to the general course of cultural evolution,
languages move from complex to simple" [my emphasis].
9. A. L. Kroeber remarks, "All indications are that no subhuman
animal ever has any impulse to utter or convey such information.
This seems to hold as essentially for dogs and apes, or for that
matter for parrots, as for insects. . . . Chimpanzees,
with larynx, tongue, and lips similar to ours, do not even try
to learn to reproduce human words to which they respond in their
behaviour. There is an old epigram that the reason animals do
not speak is that they have nothing to say. Its psychology is
somewhat crude, but fundamentally correct." Anthropology,
Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1948, p.41.
Munro Fox asks, "Can animals
ever learn to understand our human language? Most pet-lovers
would answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative. But usually a
dog learns the tone of voice, not the actual words. If you say
to a dog in a cheerful voice, 'I'm going to beat you,' he will
wag his tail. If you tell him in a mournful tone, 'I've got a
bone for you,' he will put his tail between his legs." The
Personality of Animals, Pelican Books, London, 1952, p.28.

The more that is known about
(communication systems in monkeys and apes) the less these systems
seem to help in the understanding of human language.

And G. G. Simpson,
commenting on this, wrote, (11) Many other attempts have been made to
determine the evolutionary origin of language and all have failed."Maybe language did not evolve at all!
On the other hand, history soon
provided instances of human beings who lacked all the normal
faculties of speech, i.e., sight, hearing, and voice, and yet
who learned to speak (with their fingers of course) and to communicate
ideas at a very high level of abstraction. This once more seemed
to indicate that the real secret lay in the structure of the
brain, or in some other quality of human nature, and not in the
organs of the voice.
It was therefore concluded that
some genetic strain must suddenly have appeared to alter the
structure of the human brain in some way at present unknown,
thus paving the way for the appearance of this peculiarly human
faculty. (12) Yet
this does not answer the main problem, even if such a mutation
could be shown to have occurred. For we have on record the case
of two feral children, brought up entirely in the wilds, without
any human companionship except that they were themselves companions
in isolation, who never between them spoke a single word of any
form whatever. Thus we find that even the presence of another
human being, and the possession of a truly human brain (for subsequently
they were taught to speak, though always with limitations) do
not in themselves constitute the necessary framework within which
speech must inevitably appear.
We are still left, therefore, with
the problem as to who started the process, for the process must
be started by someone. While it is true that a few authorities
believe that the human race may be an amalgam of several distinct
and independently originated stocks, springing from lower forms
of life, there are many others equally committed to an evolutionary
origin for man, who hold that he must be derived from a single
stock. (13) In
this single stock we must have a

10. Lancaster, J. B., The Origin of Man,
edited by P. L. DeVose, Wenner-Grenn Foundation, New York,
1965.
11. Simpson, G. G., ref.5, p.477.
12. Cassirer, Ernst, An Essay on Man, Yale, 1948, p.31:
it should be noted that he has to fall back simply on the concept
of some unusual mutation, never again repeated.
13. The official statement of UNESCO is to the effect that the
human race is to be derived from a single stock. Man, Royal Anthropological
Institute, London, June, 1952, p.90, section 125. In Europe there
are some dissenting voices, although in the New World almost
all authorities agree with this.

pg.5
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first man and a first
woman. It matters little what we call them, whether Adam (which
simply means "man") and Eve (which really means "child
bearer," i.e., mother), or some more technical name, we
are still dealing with the same two individuals. What is to account
for the fact that they began to talk to one another and this
has continued wherever their descendants are found, and without
exception, for no people on earth are known without a fully developed
language. People are known in one part of the world or another
without almost every faculty which we hold to be essentially
human, even without mother-love, but not one people has ever
been found without the faculty of speech.
It may be stated simply then,
that scientifically the question is beyond our reach. About all
that scientific investigations can do is to demonstrate what
cannot be the origin.

2. The Biblical Account

In Genesis,
however, the story of the first conversation on earth is revealed.
And since it is the only story that shows insight into the nature
of man's first steps at conversation, it is of peculiar interest
no matter whether we view it as fancy or as fact, for all about
us every day are children learning to speak for the first time
and showing us consistently a certain pattern of learning which
by its very persistence leads us to suppose that it is the only
pattern by which man ever learned to speak. Not merely the subject
of conversation of the first pair, but the consequences of it,
and the circumstances in which it came to pass, are of real significance
for all those who today are concerned with the problem of human
nature and conduct. For it is man's power of speech which has
enabled him to do what he has done and to be what he is, whether
for good or for ill. The power of speech involves the power of
abstraction and of self-consciousness, and of delayed reaction
and decision. It has in short made man in part a free-willed
agent. But it has also enabled him to learn in a unique way and
to pass on the substance of his learning so that culture has
become cumulative.

Sounds
of Speech: Signs, Symbols, Words

But let us revert once more, and
consider the points raised in the foregoing in greater detail.
It is strange how frequently what is obviously true turns out
to be quite false. For centuries it was obvious to everyone that
the sun moved around the earth; and until acceptance of this
obvious fact was entirely undermined, no further progress in
astronomy was possible. That animals talked to one another was
equally obvious. In times of danger a shrill warning was uttered,
and the answeringprecautions of flight were undertaken by those
who heard the signal, obviously indicating that they clearly
understood what was being "said."

pg.6
of 23

Signs vs Symbols

Curiously enough
some of the most profound observations regarding the real nature
of so-called animal speech have finally come not from a man who
was a naturalist, but a man who was basically a philosopher interested
in the nature of human nature. George Herbert Mead (14) showed in a way which
virtually compels assent that animals are not self-conscious
and therefore can only utter signals, which are not expressions
of thought or of emotion. Such sounds are uttered involuntarily,
like the "Oh" and "Ah" of a man too deeply
moved for speech. The excited whining of a dog in anticipation
of food is not the dog's mind expressing anticipation, but a
reflex expressing itself. The dog does not express emotion consciously,
but the emotion expresses itself. Raymond Pearl has pointed out
that herd leaders are not leaders in the sense that human beings
may be, for no thought or reasoning is involved. (15) They serve rather as a
special sense organ for the whole herd, and their position as
leader is in a way an accident of biological processes. Thus
Mead distinguishes between a sound which is a sign, and a sound
which is a symbol. The first is shared by all creatures able
to express emotion, including fear and anger, hate and love,
and of course in man, laughter. But a sign of such a nature is
involuntary as a rule; always involuntary in the case of animals,
but not always so in the case of man who is such a prodigious
actor. The "Oh" of a man suddenly injured is not "thought"
out. It expresses itself. Naturally we understand it all -- the
scream of fright, the roar of laughter: both are read, but neither
are truly language. Mead points out that it is not until a child
discovers what the meaning of his own sound to others is, and
then deliberately makes the sound with this meaning attached
to it, that the child speaks. In this sense speech might be held
to start when a child discovers that it can cry (without compulsion)
merely to gain attention to its self. Such an attitude arises
out of self-consciousness, and the consciousness of others as
being similar to oneself.
A child thus discovering the trick
of gaining attention becomes an actor. Darwin was interested
in the question of "acting" because he felt it threw
light on the origin of language. (16) He felt that the

14. Mead, George Herbert, Mind, Self, and
Society, University of Chicago Press, 7th edition, 1948.
15. Pearl, R., Man the Animal, Bloomington, Indiana, 1946,
p.115.
16. In his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals (published in 1872), Darwin has shown that expressive
sounds or acts are dictated by certain biological needs and used
according to definite biological rules. Thus a sneer was held
to be the remnant of "baring the teeth," and so on.
However it is recognized today that Darwin had over-simplified
the problem of speech by equating it with the ability to make
noises and express emotions.

pg.7
of 23

actor in "pulling
a face" to indicate anger was only doing what a dog might
do when it bared its teeth to frighten its enemy. But this assumed
that the dog is conscious of the face he is pulling and realizes
that by doing it he can frighten his opponent. In actual fact
it seems quite certain now that for the dog "the face is
pulling itself," and no self-consciousness is involved.
To the other dog it is a sign to which he responds in a characteristic
manner. But because the originator is moved by emotion and not
by abstract or self-conscious thought, no speech is involved.
It is a sign and not a symbol, for symbols have a nature arbitrarily
(and therefore consciously) assigned by user and reader alike.
The actor pulls a face consciously, knowing that it will be interpreted
in a given way, and his thought so expressed in a symbolic form,
read and understood by the audience, is communicated deliberately
by what must be termed symbolic language. In common speech we
may speak of a sign language, but it seems desirable to distinguish
between what is in reality a symbol language and the unconscious
sign of anger which an animal may express in the presence of
an enemy.

Words: emotional vs. propositional
That animal cries are emotional
only, and not conceptual, is now the considered opinion of those
who have made a study of the matter. Cassirer pointed this out:
(17)

Everyone who examines the different
psychological theses and theories with an unbiased and critical
mind must come at last to the conclusion that the problem cannot
be cleared up by simply referring to forms of animal communication
and to certain animal accomplishments which are gained by drill
and training. All such accomplishments admit of the most contradictory
interpretations. Hence it is necessary, first of all, to find
a correct logical starting point, one which can lead us to natural
and sound interpretation of the empirical facts. This starting
point is the definition of speech . . . . The first and
most fundamental stratum is evidently the language of the emotions.
A great portion of all human utterance still belongs to this
stratum. But there is a form of speech that shows us quite a
different type. Here the word is by no means a mere interjection;
it is not an involuntary expression of feeling, but a part of
a sentence which has a definite syntactical and logical structure.
. . . As regards chimpanzees, Wolfgang Koehler states that
they achieve a considerable degree of expression by means of
gesture. Rage, terror, despair, grief, pleading, desire, playfulness,
and pleasure are readily expressed in this manner.
Nevertheless one element, which
is characteristic of and indispensable to all human language
is missing; we find no signs which have an objective reference
or meaning. "It may be taken as positively proved,"
says Koehler, (18) "that their gamut
of phonetics is entirely

subjective and can only express emotions,
never designate or describe objects. But they have so many phonetic
elements which are also common to human languages that their
lack of articulate speech cannot be ascribed to secondary (glosso-labial)
limitations. Their gestures too, of face and body, like their
expressions in sound, never designate or describe objects."

Cassirer added,
(19)

Here we touch upon the crucial
point in our whole problem. The difference between propositional
language and emotional language is the real landmark between
the human and the animal world. All the theories and observations
concerning animal language are wide of the mark if they fail
to recognize this fundamental difference. In all the literature
of the subject, there does not seem to be a single conclusive
proof of the fact that any animal ever made the decisive step
from subjective to objective, from affective to propositional
language. Koehler insists emphatically that speech is definitely
beyond the powers of anthropoid apes. He maintains that the lack
of this invaluable technical aid and the great limitation of
those very components of thought, the so-called images, constitute
the causes which prevent animals from ever achieving even the
least beginning of cultural development.

The English
neurologist, Jackson, introduced the term "propositional"
language in order to account for some very interesting pathological
phenomena. He found that many patients suffering from aphasia
had by no means lost the use of speech, but they could not employ
their words in an objective, propositional sense. Something had
therefore reduced their speech to the level of animal noise which,
like the cry of the parrot, was no longer human language at all.

19. Cassirer, E., ref.12, p.30. Similarly
Munro Fox (ref.9, pp.22, 23): "We ourselves, of course,
have to learn how to talk, but babies do not learn to make cries
of various sorts corresponding to their feelings. Such cries
of infants are not learned but are made by instinct. This leads
to a most important question. Does an ape, too, know how to make
its various characteristic sounds and grimaces by inborn instinct,
without any learning, or does it learn its 'language' from its
mother? This question has been answered by keeping an ape quite
alone from its birth until it was five years old. For the first
five years of its life this ape did not hear or see any other
apes. The investigator found that the animal was able to express
itself in ape language just as well as any other ape of that
species. All its cries and expressions were made by instinct;
they had not been learned. It is clear that the language of these
animals has nothing in common with our speech; it resembles cries
we may make such as 'Oh' and 'Ah,' or shouting for joy, or weeping."
Subsequently, he writes: "The
chief difference between the sound-language of animals and human
language is that while animal's sounds or movements express its
feelings, and may communicate feelings and intentions to its
fellows, we do more than this. We have words for things, and
words for thoughts, and we make these words into sentences. With
animals this is, of course, not so. If I take a banana away from
a chimpanzee, he can show that he is angry; if he wants a banana,
he can show that he is hungry; if he gets a banana, he can show
that he is glad. His movements and expressions indicate that
he is angry, hungry, or glad, even if they are made unwittingly.
But the chimpanzee cannot say anything about a banana.
Animals have no conversation." (p.29).

pg.9
of 23

Meanwhile the clicks and grunts which in popular imagination
were taken to be a major part of some primitive languages actually
take a very minor place in the structure of such languages. It
can be said that the languages of the most primitive people,
as for example the Australian aborigines, are exceedingly full
of terms and are definitive and specific in the extreme. Indeed
they are so rich in terms and names for things that abstract
thought becomes well-nigh impossible, for there are no such simple
things as "classes"; everything is individual and specific.
(20) We may quote
Cassirer again, (21)

Hammer-Purgstall has written
a paper in which he enumerates the various names for the camel
in Arabic. There are no less than five or six thousand terms
used in describing the camel; yet none of these gives us a general
biological concept. All express concrete details concerning the
shape, the size, the color, the age and the gait of the animal.
. . . In many American tribes we find an astounding variety
of terms for a particular action, for instance for walking or
striking. Such terms bear to each other rather a relation of
juxtaposition than of subordination. A blow with the fist cannot
be described with the same term as a blow with the palm, and
a blow with a weapon requires another name than one with a whip
or a rod. In his description of the Bakairi language -- an idiom
spoken by an Indian tribe in Central Brazil -- Karl von den Steinen
relates that each species of parrot and palm tree has its individual
name, whereas there exists no name to express the genus "parrot"
or "palm." "The Bakairi," he asserts, "attach
themselves so much to the numerous particular notions that they
take no interest in the common characteristics. They are choked
in the abundance of the material and cannot manage it economically.
They have only small coin, but in that they must be said to be
excessively rich rather than poor."

The languages
of primitive people all over the world show this same amazing
wealth. Here objectivity is a characteristic in excess. What
is specifically lacking therefore in animal forms of communication,
is here exemplified to the nth degree . . . and yet it was formerly
thought that such societies would provide us with the very links
between civilized man and the primates below him.
Levy-Bruhl has gone into this question
very extensively. It is true that his views of primitive mentality
are questioned today in many quarters, but the question mark
is placed against his use of

20. Levy-Bruhl can be quoted to good effect
in connection with this: "The (Australian) languages bear
witness to this, for there is an almost total absence of generic
terms to correspond with general ideas, and at the same time
an extraordinary abundance of specific terms, those denoting
persons and things of whom or to which a clear and precise image
occurs to the mind as soon as they are mentioned. Eyre had already
remarked upon this and noted that such terms as tree, bird, etc.,
were lacking, although specific terms were applied to every variety
of tree, fish or bird." Lucien Levy-Bruhl, How Natives
Think, translated by Lilian A. Clare, Knopf, New York, 1925,
p.170.
21. Cassirer, Ernst, ref.12, p.135.

pg.10
of 23

the concept of "prelogical"
thinking. He argued that native people did not use the kind of
logical constructions in their thinking that we do. But it is
quite evident today that they are as capable of logical thinking
as we are, though their premises are different. Allowing for
this misconception, if misconception it be, Levy-Bruhl nevertheless
has done great service in showing the amazing degree of language
development which characterizes the most primitive people known
to us. Certainly such people do not provide a missing link from
animal grunts and cries to cultured speech. Thus Levy-Bruhl wrote:
(22)

This concept, that in the evolution
of thought the simplest is the earliest, is a concept which undoubtedly
proceeds from Spencer's philosophy, but that does not make it
any more certain. I do not think it can be proved in the material
world, and in what we know of the world of "thought"
the facts would seem to contradict it. Sir James Frazer (who
was committed to the evolutionary principle) seems to be confusing
the simple with the undifferentiated here. Yet we find that the
languages spoken by peoples who are the least developed of any
we know -- the Australian aborigines, Abipones, Andaman Islanders,
Fuegains, etc. -- exhibit a good deal of complexity. They are
far less simple than English, though much more primitive.

Similarly he
quoted the experience of Livingstone in South Africa:(23)

It is not the want, but the
superabundance of names that misleads travellers, and the terms
used are so multifarious that good scholars will at times scarcely
know more than the subject of the general conversation. We have
heard about a score of words to indicate different varieties
of gait -- one walks leaning forward, or backward; swaying from
side to side; loungingly or smartly; swaggeringly; swinging the
arms; or only one arm; head down, or up, or otherwise, and each
of these modes of walking was expressed by a particular verb.

Levy-Bruhl stressed
the specificity of native languages from various parts of the
world, drawing on the reports of many travellers of the last
century: (24)

Eyre remarks upon this with
the Australian Aborigines. He states that generic terms such
as tree, fish, bird, etc., were lacking although specific terms
were applied to every variety of tree, fish or bird. . . . In
western Australia, the natives have names for all the conspicuous
stars, for every natural feature of the ground, every hill, swamp,
bend of a river, etc., but not for the river itself. Lastly,
not to prolong this list unduly, in the Zambesi district, every
knoll, hill, mountain, and every peak on a range has its name,
and so has every watercourse, dell, and plain. In fact, every
feature, or portion of the country, is so distinguished by appropriate
names that it would take a lifetime to decipher their meaning.

We could go on indefinitely. The Aymara Indians of
Chuciutu in Peru have 209 distinct words for potatoes, and
such northern people as the Eskimo of Canada and the Chukchee
of Siberia have an almost unlimited number of names for snow
and ice, in every conceivable form, yet not a single word for
"snow." Suffice it to say, therefore, that primitive
languages may be primitive only in so far as they do not permit
the refinement of abstract ideas, such a refinement as is essential
for the construction of a pure science. But this lack by no means
implies that they have a deficient language. Their terms for
dealing with objects exceed our own many times; their dictionary
would be correspondingly many times the length of ours.

Speech: Instinctive or Learned

We have pointed
out that no people are without a language. From this observation
and because all subjects investigated up till a few years ago
had possessed the power of speech no matter how primitive their
culture, it was assumed that speech was instinctive. (25) But in time it became
apparent that this was not so. We may repeat that throughout
the centuries of historical record, so-called "wild"
or feral children have been reported. It was not till comparatively
recently that such children were found and studied by men whose
judgment and scholarship were sufficient to guard them against
sensational conclusions intended to stimulate public imagination.
Such children have always been found to be without speech.
Recently a very complete treatment
of all known cases of feral children up to 1966 was republished
by J. A. L. Singh and Robert M. Zingg, under the title Wolf-Children
and Feral Man.(26)
In all, 36 cases believed to be reasonably well documented are
dealt with in some detail. Many are well attested, others rather
less so, but the cumulative effect is to show that such children
have indeed been brought up, due to early total isolation, by
animals which include wolves, bears, pigs, a jackal, and even
a leopard. Without exception, they did not learn to speak a word
while in the wild and almost nothing even when later attempts
were made to re-educate them.

25. Edward Sapir, an incomparable scholar
of linguistics, wrote: "The gift of speech and a well-ordered
language are characteristic of every known group of human beings.
No tribe has ever been found which is without language, and all
statements to the contrary may be dismissed as mere folklore.
. . . The truth of the matter is that language is an essentially
perfect means of expression and communication among every known
people." Article on "Language," Encyclopedica
of the Social Sciences, Macmillan, New York, 1933.
26. Singh, J. A. L. and Robert M. Zingg, Wolf-Children and
Feral Man, Archon Books, 1966, xli and 379 pp., ills., with
forewords by R. Rugglesgate, Arnold Gesell, F. N. Maxfield, and
K. Davis.

pg.12
of 23

Susanne Langer remarked in this connection: (27)

The only well-attested cases
are Peter the wild boy, found in the fields of Hanover in 1723;
Victor, known as the "Savage of Aveyron" captured in
that district of Southern France in 1799; and two little girls,
Amala and Kamala taken in the vicinity of Midnapur, India, in
1920. Even of these, only Victor has been scientifically studied
and described.
One thing however we know definitely
about all of them: none of these children could speak in any
tongue, remembered or invented [her emphasis]. A child without
human companions would of course find no response to his chattering;
but if speech were a genuine instinct, this should make little
difference. Civilized children talk to the cat without knowing
that they are soliloquizing, and a dog that answers with a bark
is a good audience; moreover Amala and Kamala had each other.
Yet they did not talk. Where, then, is the language making instinct
of very young children?

It is as though
Providence had secured for us by historical "accident"
the materials we particularly need for testing all such hypotheses.
Had we on record merely the instance of lone waifs and strays
such as Peter and Victor, we might still have argued that they
did not speak because they did not have company. Quite apart
from the observation which Langer makes -- that children talk
to animals without sensing any incongruity (as adults do too!)
-- we have also the record in very recent times of the finding
of two children who shared their strange childhood upbringing
in the wild and still never spoke one word to each other. Moreover,
every subsequent effort to teach the boy Victor the use of language
failed conspicuously, and when the question is asked, Why did
he fail, when others succeeded in part (though very inadequately),
the answer seems to be in Langer's own words, "Because he
was already about twelve years old. . . ." In other
words, when Victor was found, he had evidently passed the stage
of development where he could learn a language, whereas the other
children in varying degree, were still young enough to be taught
at least a few words and expressions, though none of them developed
into normal human beings.
We may draw a further conclusion
from all this, therefore, that the capacity is latent in every
child for the learning of a language, even in those who are reared
in the wild, but this capacity does not guarantee that language
will automatically arise of its own accord. On the contrary in
each of the four children known to us, no language whatever did
appear of its own accord. It was only after they were spoken
to, that they spoke in turn, and even then only provided that
the capacity for acquiring the faculty of thinking in words had
not been outgrown and lost through lack of use.
(28)

27. Langer, Susanne, Philosophy in a New
Key, Mentor Books, New American Library, New York, 1952,
p.87.
28. See J. W. Tomb, "On the Intuitive Capacity of Children
to Understand Spoken Language," British Journal of Psychiatry,
vol.16, 1925, p.553-55.

pg.13
of 23

How Sounds Become
Speech

Having arrived
at this point, the question immediately arose as to whether it
might be possible to teach animals to speak as men speak. We
have already mentioned that the absence of speech among animals
cannot be attributed to the absence of the secondary glosso-labial
anatomical structures, for they have many phonetic elements which
are also common to human languages. Granted that some of the
sounds we make might be beyond the capacity of some animals,
at least they ought to be able to reproduce a kind of dialect
of their own. But they never do. It is felt that this must therefore
be due to some lack in the brain. Formerly it was customary to
assume that the essential difference in animal and human thinking
processes was one merely of degree. But it seems now that it
is one of kind rather. Briffault pointed out some years ago:
(29)

Between the mental constitution
of the rudest savages and that of any animal, including the anthropoids,
there is a wide gap, and that gap consists of more than a difference
of degree, it amounts to a difference in kind. Primarily that
difference depends upon the conceptual character of human mentality.

It is this conceptual
character in man permits speech. Again from the pen of
Henri Bergson: (30)

The same impression arises when
we compare the brain of man and that of the animals. The difference
at first appears to be only a difference in size and complexity.
But judging by function, there must be something else besides
. . . . , between man and the animals the difference is no longer
one of degree, but of kind.

Efforts have
been made for years, and continue to be made, to open up lines
of communication with animals. The prodigious and patient labours
of the Kelloggs (1933), (31) Hayeses (1951), (32) Gardners (1967) (33) and Premack (1969) (34) have revealed some surprising facts. It is certain
that animals do communicate with each other successfully, and
man ought therefore to be able to establish contact by this means,
as indeed he may with his horse or his dog. But apparently in
those animals which seem therefore capable of understanding
speech, they do not themselves have the capacity to speak.
Such creatures as Premack's chimpanzees did "talk"
by signs, but vocalization has proved

quite beyond their physiological
capacity thus far. By contrast, birds which can vocalize meaningfully
to the hearer, seem nevertheless without the mind necessary to
make their own vocalization meaningful to themselves. Birds have
vocal organs adequate to the task but no mental equipment to
make the capability useful to them. Other animals may have the
mental equipment but no vocal organs adequate to communicate
their thoughts usefully to men. (35) At the present time it does not seem that any animal
communication system could possibly account for the human one.
This is as Eric Lenneberg concluded:

The rather widespread belief
that many animals have a language of a very primitive and limited
kind (or that the animal pupils of English instruction can enter
the first stage of language acquisition) is easily refuted by
a comparison with man's beginnings in language.

Animals do not
speak, nor have they thus far been taught to speak, not because
they lack the mechanical means, the muscles in the tongue and
throat, etc., but evidently because they do not have the brain
structure necessary to permit conceptual thought.
On the other hand, and this is
of profound importance, a human being can be lacking in all the
normal requirements for speech and yet, because of the structure
of the brain, the mechanical and secondary handicaps can be overcome,
and conversation be carried on at a very high level of abstraction.
It would almost seem as though Providence were again at work
in history, for we have two examples of individuals who were
blind, deaf, and dumb, and yet who developed a high degree of
understanding and education, one becoming an internationally
famous spokesman for her fellow sufferers. Both the fact that
such handicapped people could learn to communicate ideas and
the circumstances surrounding the first steps by which they learned
to speak at all, are of very great significance for our purposes.
Moreover when it is found that both individuals passed from speechlessness
to speech by the very same kind of process, it is a matter of
considerable interest here.
The names of these two blind deaf-mutes
are Helen Keller and Laura Bridgeman. Their story, in so far
as it immediately concerns us, is best told in the words of their
teachers and their own. It is desirable to comment that in the
experience of both individuals, they had learned to tap out with
their hands certain signs communicating needs as they arose.
In the experience of both individuals a day came when the real
meaning of these signs was discovered by each in turn.
Miss Sullivan, the teacher of Helen
Keller, has recorded the exact

35. See the Doorway Paper, "Is Man an
Animal?" Part V in Evolution or Creation?, vol.4
in The Doorway Papers Series.

pg.15
of 23

date on which the child
began to understand the meaning and function of human language: (36)

I must write you a line
this morning, because something very important has happened.
Helen has taken the second great step in her education. She has
learned that everything has a name and that the manual alphabet
is the key to everything she wants to know.
This morning, while she was washing,
she wanted to know the name for "water." When she wants
to know the name of anything, she points to it, and pats my hand.
I spelled w-a-t-e r and thought no more about it until after
breakfast. . . . [Later on], we went out to the pump house, and
I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As
the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled w-a-t-e-r
in Helen's free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation
of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She
dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came
into her face. She spelled "water" several times. Then
she dropped on the ground and asked for its name, and pointed
to the pump and trellis and suddenly turning round she asked
for my name. I spelled "teacher." All the way back
to the house she was highly excited and learned the name of every
object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty
new words to her vocabulary. The next morning she got up like
a radiant fairy. She has flitted from object to object asking
the name of everything and kissing me for very gladness. Every
thing must have a name now. Wherever we go she asks eagerly for
the names of things she has not learned at home. She is anxious
for her friends to spell, and eager to teach the letters to everyone
she meets. She drops the signs and pantomime she used before,
as soon as she has words to supply their place, and the acquirement
of a new word affords her the liveliest pleasure. And we notice
that her face grows more expressive each day.

What a simple
account this is, and yet how dramatic. It is almost like being
present at the birth of a soul! And how significant do the names
of things become. What this is to be called, and what that, is
now of supreme importance, for the name of the thing is the thing
itself. To possess the name is to possess the very object.
But we also have Helen's own account
of this experience:(37)

We walked down the path to the
well-house, attracted by all the fragrance of the honeysuckle
with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water, and my
teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed
over my hand she spelled into the other the word "water,"
first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention
fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty
consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning
thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to
me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something
that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul,
gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. There were barriers still,
it is true, but barriers that in time could be swept away.

36. Sullivan, Anne M., in the Supplement to
The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller, Grosset & Dunlap,
New York, 1905, p.315.
37. Keller, Helen, The Story of My Life, ref.36, pp.23,
24.

pg.16
of 23

I left
the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each
name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house
every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That
was because I saw everything with the strange new sight that
had come to me.

It seems presumptuous
to attempt to interpret Helen's experience, as it would be foolish
for a blind man to describe the colour of a sunset. But it appears
that Helen realized for the first time that w-a-t-e-r was not
a sequence of taps indicating her need, but a substance which
stood apart from her need, though it could also supply it. It
stood apart from her need, objectively -- it was the substance
in its own objective existence. W-a-t-e-r was not her supply,
but water, whether from the pump or in a cup, or in the
rain, or in a stream. Naturalists often remark that one of the
chief delights of a walk in the country is that they can identify
the plants and animals of which they know the name. When we know
the name, in some peculiar way we understand the nature of a
thing. It is this kind of conviction which prompted Moses to
ask God His name. To most primitive people a name is most secret,
for when one has obtained the name of a person, one has obtained
a peculiar power over him. Indeed if a child in its first few
months, turns out to be constantly unwell, the Chukchee of Siberia
believe it has been given the wrong name, and they will change
it. The Eskimo do not believe the child has a soul until it has
a name, and thus no murder is involved in infanticide so long
as the child is still unnamed. Recently there is on record the
case of a child in a psychiatric ward who having reached a certain
point in her recovery, decided to change her name; and no one
could persuade her to retain the name she formerly had. (38) It is strange how often
names suit people, and yet it is obvious that the name is given
before the personality is developed to match it. Edward Sapir
remarked on this: (39)

Language is heuristic . . .
in that its forms predetermine for us certain modes of observation
and interpretation. . . There is a widespread feeling, particularly
among primitive people, of that virtual identity or close correspondence
of words and things which leads to the magic of spells. . . .
Many lovers of nature, for instance, do not feel that they
are truly in touch with it until they have mastered the names
of a great many flowers and trees, as though the primary world
of reality were a verbal one and as though one could not get
close to nature unless one first mastered the terminology which
somehow magically expresses it.

Cassirer gives
us the record of Laura Bridgeman's experience:(40)

38. Bettelheim, Bruno, "Schizophrenic
Art: A Case Study," Scientific American, 1952, p.31ff.
39. Article on "Language," in Encyclopedia of Social
Sciences, Macmillan, New York, 1933, p. 57. See also Arthur
Custance "What's in a Name?", Part IV in The Flood:
Local or Global?, vol.9 in The Doorway Papers Series.
40. Casserer, Ernst, ref.12, p. 37. He quotes Miss Drew, her
teacher (p.35): "I shall never forget," writes Miss
Drew, "the first meal taken after she appreciated the use
of the finger-alphabet. Every article she touched must have a
name and I was obliged to call one to help me wait upon the other
children while she kept me busy in spelling new words" (See
Mary Swift Lamson Life and Education of Laura Bridgeman, the
Deaf, Dumb and Blind Girl, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston,
1881, pp.7ff.).

pg.17
of 23

Long before Laura Bridgeman had learned to speak,
she had developed a very curious mode of expression, a language
of her own. This language did not consist of articulated sounds
but only of various noises which are described as "emotional
noises." She was in the habit of uttering these sounds in
the presence of certain persons. Thus they became entirely individualized.
Every person in her environment was greeted by a special noise.
"Whenever she met an acquaintance unexpectedly," writes
Dr. Lieber, "I found that she repeatedly uttered the word
for that person before she began to speak. It was the utterance
of pleasurable recognition." But when by means of the finger
alphabet the child had grasped the meaning of human language
the case was altered. Now the sound really became a name; and
this name was not bound to an individual person but could be
changed if the circumstances seemed to require it. One day, for
instance, Laura Bridgeman had a letter from her former teacher,
Miss Drew, who, in the meantime by her marriage had become Mrs.
Morton. In this letter she was invited to visit her teacher.
This gave her great pleasure, but she found fault with Miss Drew
because she had signed the letter with her old name instead of
using the name of her husband. She even said that now she must
find another noise for her teacher, as the one for Miss Drew
must not be the same as that for Mrs. Morton. It is clear that
the former "noises" have here undergone an important
and very interesting change in meaning. They are no longer special
utterances, inseparable from a particular concrete situation.
They have become abstract names. For the new name invented by
the child did not designate a new individual, but the same individual
in a new relationship.
Laura Bridgeman subsequently studied
arithmetic and geography, and actually became a successful teacher
of others who were both blind and deaf, and like Helen Keller
she manifestly lived an amazingly full, interesting, and genuinely
enjoyable life.
From both these instances there
is much to learn. In the first place, there seems to be some
form of inborn capacity to make emotional noises, and this is
shared by animals. That this is not dependent upon mimic is evident
from the fact that animals brought up in entire isolation make
all the ordinary cries and calls of their species, although trained
animals and domesticated animals, develop certain additional
sounds or variant cries. It is generally held, for example, that
dogs only bark when domesticated, howling only when entirely
wild. The second thing that we may note is that both girls developed
an entirely different, and it may be said specifically human
personality, once they had acquired genuine speech. Moreover,
in the initial stages of this acquisition, it was a hunger for
the names of things which most rapidly built up the power
of

pg.18
of 23

speech, and not the
desire to understand the things they could name.
This is characteristic of all children.
Dr. David Major wrote in this connection: (41)

By the beginning of the twenty-third
month, our child had developed a mania for going about naming
things, as if to tell others their names or to call our attention
to the things examined. He would look at, point towards, or put
his hand on an article, speak its name, then look at his companions.

Commenting on
this, Cassirer remarked:

The hunger for names which at
a certain age appears in every normal child and which has been
described by all students of child psychology proves . . . that
he learns to form the concepts of those objects, to come to terms
with the objective world.
Henceforth the child stands on
firmer ground. His vague uncertain fluctuating perceptions and
his dim feelings begin to assume a new shape. They may be said
to crystallize around the name as a fixed center, a focus of
thought. Without the help of the name, every new advance made
in the progress of objectification would always run the risk
of being lost again the next moment.

As Eric Lenneberg
points out, (42)
in Greece in the period of Classical philosophy, the relationship
of the name of a thing to the thing named was the focal point
of discussions on language. The question was, Did the object
predetermine the name in some way? But the object can hardly
do this since different languages appoint to it their own identifying
tags appropriate to their world-view as a language. In his dialogue
Cratyles, Plato (427-347 B.C.) sought a solution to this
relationship of name and thing, but his answers do not really
clarify the problem today and certainly we are no nearer solving
the problem of origins for ourselves.

So Who Did
Speak First?

The question
still remains for us, as we consider this extraordinary and long
overlooked or minimized trait of human nature, Where and how
did it all begin? We have the case of two Indian children, Amala
and Kamala, neither of whom had spoken one word between them,
although they shared each other's company. Reverting back to
the very first pair, whom we may most reasonably refer to as
Adam and Eve for purposes of identification, who or what first
induced them to talk to one another?

Names stand for processes, and knowing the name seems
to deceive us into thinking we understand the process. Those
committed to the evolutionary origin of man must fall back upon
the use of a magic word for the appearance of the special kind
of brain man has which makes speech possible for him. They
tell us it was a "mutation" of some sort! And there
we have the whole "explanation." But even if a name
were an explanation, they still have not told us who spoke first
to start the process off, nor are we told what kind of a conversation
would be most probable -- though we might have guessed by now
that the one who began the process must be one who was other
than Adam and Eve, and prior to them and must already have been
a speaking person. And we might have guessed too that the first
words would have to be a list of the names of things.
In the first chapter of Genesis
we are constantly told that "God said . . ." and not
merely that God did. (43) Moreover in the creation of man a peculiar change
takes place in the narrative, for having noted the recurrent
phrase "Let the sea bring forth" or "Let the earth
bring forth," as though directions were given to that which
is inanimate to obey the word thus spoken, when the creation
of man is in view, we are immediately presented with a conversation
in heaven. (44)
That God was not speaking to the heavenly host of angels when
He said, "Let us make man . . ." is clear from the
fact that man was to be made in His image, and after His
likeness. This surely means that man was made in the likeness
of God, and not in the likeness of the angels. When God therefore
said, "Let us make man in our image . . ." He was not
addressing Himself to the angels at all. This conversation was
therefore originated and carried on within the Godhead. He who
first spoke to Adam was God, who had already been conversing
about him.
What follows in the story is of
real importance. Any thoughtful reader must surely be struck
by the frequency with which the idea of "naming" things
occurs in this early record. In some books one finds the glossary
of terms at the end. Although they are needed at the beginning,
it is discouraging to find oneself faced with such a list before
some interest has been aroused in the subject matter. But in
this instance, and for reasons which are obvious in the light
of what we now know of the faculty of speech which man was given,
the meaning of the first words and the names of the ordinary
phenomena about which God wished to inform Adam, were given to
him in some detail. Thus a name is given to the heavens, and
to the earth, making more specific the general reference to them
in Genesis 1:1. It is as though God had said, "Now I wish
to tell you about these phenomena, and henceforth therefore we
will refer to the sky as heaven, and to the soil upon which you
stand as earth, to the

43. Genesis 1:3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 20, 22
and 24.
44. Genesis 1:26.

pg.20
of 23

light as day and the
darkness as night, to the waters as sea, the atmosphere as the
firmament, and we will name the rivers, and the sun and the moon,
and even the stars." Then two trees are singled out and
given compound names, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
Then Adam received his own name.
But there is a break in the narrative at this point. Having established
a frame of reference, Adam was now invited to speak for himself.
(45) Most of us
like to name our own pets. Part of the commission given to Adam
was that he should govern the animals, and it was natural therefore
that he should be invited to name them for himself. None of them
had any name up till then, and thus with artless simplicity
the record says that whatever Adam called any creature, that
was thenceforth its name.
Now we are not told how he named
them. We do not know whether he was guided by their colour, size,
shape, or the cries they made. But what followed this naming
ceremony seems to imply that there was a more significant reason
for giving him the task. There are some who believe that Adam
was merely one of many such representatives of man-like creatures,
perhaps a special Homo sapiens singled out by the Creator
who had then given him the benefit of a unique spirit. But the
record seems in a remarkable manner to go out of its way to make
it clear that Adam was the only man alive at that time. In Genesis
2:5, we are told that "there was not a man to till the ground."
In Genesis 2:18, we are told that God had remarked "It was
not good that man should be alone." In Genesis 2:20, we
are told that "there was not found a companion for him."
And finally in Genesis 3:20, it is stated that Eve became the
mother of all living. It seems clear from the wording of Genesis
2:18-23, that God wanted Adam to discover for himself that he
could never find among the lower forms of life a suitable companion
in his loneliness. It seems manifest too, that if Adam had been
a slouching half-ape creature God might well have brought to
him other creatures little different from himself of the primate
stock, which might have sufficed for his half-intelligent mind
as an appropriate mate. However, with proper insight, Adam gave
to each animal brought to him a name by which he signified in
some way his reaction and his evaluation of its relative position
with respect to himself.
That this is so seems clear when
one reads what followed this naming process, for, removed into
a state of unconsciousness, perhaps tired by the exercise of
judgment in such a critical matter, Adam is "divided"
and from himself is taken a true help-meet. Awakening

45. Genesis 2:19.

pg.21
of 23

from this sleep, and
quite probably still supposing that the process of naming must
continue, he is presented with this creature in whom he instantly
recognizes a true help-meet, and a very part of himself.
The whole story is so simply written
and so profound in its insight into the nature of speech and
the forms which it first takes in childhood, and the true significance
of the use of names for things, that it is almost as though God
had cast the record in such a form deliberately that it might
shed its own light on one of the profoundest of all mysteries.
At any rate it is the only light we have. There is no other from
any other source.
Susanne Langer made a significant
admission therefore when she wrote: (46)

Language though normally learned
in infancy without compulsion or formal training, is nonetheless
a product of sheer learning, an art handed down from generation
to generation, and where there is no teacher there is no learning.
. .
This throws us back upon an old
and mystifying problem. If we find no prototype of speech in
the highest animals, and man will not say even the first word
by instinct, then how did all his tribes acquire their various
languages? Who began the art which now we have to learn? And
why is it not restricted to the cultured races, but possessed
by every primitive family from darkest Africa to the loneliness
of the polar ice? Even the simplest of practical arts, such as
clothing, cooking, or pottery, is found wanting in one human
group or another, or at least found to be very rudimentary. Language
is neither absent nor archaic in any of them.
The problem is so baffling
that it is no longer considered respectable.

At the risk
of over-loading a Paper already more than a little weighted down
with quotations, valuable as they are, I cannot refrain from
one last one by Roger Brown in his Words and Things who
sums the situation up very effectively by writing: (47)

Neither feral nor isolated man
creates his own language these days, but must not such a man
have done so once in some prehistoric time and so got language
started? Actually the circumstances in which language must have
begun represent a combination for which we can provide no instances.
We have animals among animals,
animals in linguistic communities, and humans among animals;
but in none of these cases does language develop. We have humans
raised in linguistic communities and in these circumstances language
does develop. What about a human born into a human society that
has no language? We don't know of any such societies, and so
we don't know of any such individuals. But these must have been
the circumstances of language origination.

Revelation is all that remains to us, and that revelation
has been set forth in clear simple terms. God spoke to Adam
first. And in due time Adam learned to speak with God. This is
the unique relationship which man has with God, the capacity
for conscious fellowship and communication, and all that these
imply.
For this fellowship he was created,
and without it he is like a feral child, an orphan and terribly
alone. To communicate with others is necessary for the generation
of a soul in the personal sense of the term. To communicate with
God it is necessary for that soul to be truly alive, and this
kind of communication involves a fellowship based upon a true
reconciliation between God and man.